Page:The ways of war - Kettle - 1917.pdf/254

This page needs to be proofread.

what was necessary, added by methods as contemptible as were ever used in furtherance of the old political and economic tyrannies before the war. Now we have the right to call a halt. The rich, reckless clamourers who in these days are almost the monopolists of free speech have already achieved some deterioration of the ideal for which the people of the Allied countries took up the challenge of war. We may assume that the Allied Governments are better custodians of the democratic faith, but there is always danger, in times of stress, from those whom one may call the terrorists of "patriotism." Protest has become an obligation. Nobody who has watched latest developments can fail to be alarmed by their manifest tendency. That tendency may be summarised in one ignoble sentence. An attempt is being made to transform what began as a war for honour into a war for trade. Powerful intriguers of unbounded assurance are sedulous behind the backs of the fighting men, scheming to run up new flags in the place of the old. The inscription "Justice" is to be hauled down, and "Markets" is to be hoisted in its stead. In pursuance of that new object the powerful innovators are ready to extend far beyond their natural term the torture and agony which are now the sole realities of Europe. They are willing, for the accomplishment of it, to ordain that the blood of better men shall drip indefinitely into the cistern of Gehenna. And since